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"If money is speech, let this be a muttered double entendre that makes the chaste blush at both ends."
-
Chris Tannhauser (HiveGod)

Several enterprising geeks have used this to create print & play games as well as some rethemes of classics. This how to guide won't tell you how to create & upload art for a game, but it will show you how to piggyback onto someone else's hard work!

click on the share link (the circled red link) this will take you to artscow and add the album to your albums.

4.

Go to the top of the screen at Artscow and click the create your own stuff tab.

5. Scroll down the page through the various options until you reach "fun stuff" click on the playing cards

6. Click on the Custom Playing Cards 54 Designs

7.

Click the create it! button this will load the designer which will give you basic instructions. Note the warning you need to have Sliverlight installed, follow the instructions at the website if this isn't the case.

8. You will want to click down at the bottom left of the screen to untick the show poker text box.Before:

After:

9. Here you can select the album you want to load cards from, these are on the left. You can load cards in two ways, firstly by auto-filling, secondly by doing it manually. The warning with auto-filling is that if the album isn't set up right (and most of them aren't) it will end up muddling the cards up. To do it manually click on the album you want to use. This loads each individual card in the side bar. Now drag and drop each card from the deck on to each individual card on the screen. (The hide used images box is very handy!) making sure to drag the card back onto the card back space.

As you can see I autoloaded them and it mucked it up, the back is placed as the second card rather than as the back. To fix this I have to drag and drop the back card onto the side bar, then scroll down and drag and drop it onto the card back slot.

Automagically Mucked up!

Drag the offender across

Drop on the side bar

Scroll down then drag to the back card slot

10. Now you need to click on each individual card and make sure that the edges aren't going to be cut off in the printing. To do this select the card and at the top right click zoom out until you are happy (most people recommend 2-4 times). Repeat this for every card (yep very dull).

11. When you are happy click add to cart at the top of the screen. Save the project as something memorable so you can run off a few more copies at a later date, and progress to the checkout. If you want to do more decks then repeat the above instructions.

12. When you are finished enter the relevant coupon card in the slot provided, then pay via credit card or paypal.

A quick note on payment. If you use PayPal instead of CreditCard you won't get charged a currency exchange fee.

Not from your credit card company, true, but your bank may impose a fee.

Both of you are wrong. The transfer from your bank to paypal is in your home currency, without an exchange fee obviously. Paypal is charging an exchange fee, which is 2.5% and included (hidden) in the exchange rate.

Hi KrisIt is pretty easy to make just text cards on Artscow without have files to upload. I did this myself for a prototype for a game that I printed on Artscow, I had four left over card slots so wrote the rules up on them, which came out fine. The alternative, especially if you are doing multiple copies of the same cards or slight variations on the same card is nandeck, which is a bit frightening at first, but very rewarding if you persevere. (Its what I used for my prototype, and it saved a lot of hassle).

13) In case you use copyrighted material, better ask for permission, otherwise the copyright holder might get you into severe trouble.

Good point Hanno. Furthermore, it would break ArtCows terms & conditions.so they would be in their rights to not fulfill your order. Personally I think this is best used for rethemes, print & play games, and prototyping. Using it to make an exact copy of an in-print game is definitely a no-go. A grey area would be a copy of an out of print game, though I would tend to go for a retheme myself.

10. Now you need to click on each individual card and make sure that the edges aren't going to be cut off in the printing. To do this select the card and at the top right click zoom out until you are happy (most people recommend 2-4 times). Repeat this for every card (yep very dull).

I hope to order the English Auf Achse deck but am trying to get this all straight. So, is the only adjustment I need to make the adjustment in step 10 above? TIA!

I have read a lot of the ArtsCow threads & they seem confusing (decks not turning out quite right) but I assume it is because they are "older" posts of people's initial trials - it looks to me like you have clarified everything in your instructions above, yes?

ETA: also, the other day I clicked on the shared Auf Achse album & it appeared in "My Album". Today. "My Album" is empty. I cannot see how to save albums into "My Album". Any advice?

Thank you so much for posting this, David and also thanks to everyone for posting the card files on the ArtsCow site and here.

I can't promise perfection - the card stock is better than I expected but still not best quality. More importantly the trimming technique that Artscow use is clearly not an exact science, the worst cards I had done had a border that is noticeably different on different cards. Likewise the colors printed out may not be exactly the same as colors on the screen (some have also mentioned some variation between the same color on different cards - I haven't noticed this myself) and it apparently handles different colors better and worse, several people have recommended avoiding gray due to quality and also white due to picking up dust/marks easily. And of course some people have had cards mixed up and had to deal with customer services.

All that said I've made 11 decks thus far following the above instructions and I am very happy with them - they exceeded my expectations really.

Hmm. I was giving thought to scanning and reprinting a deck from a game I own but with errata or reminder text on cards that need it (for instance, Betrayal at House on the Hill - there are enough cards that could use a text addendum that I'm thinking of just reprinting the lot of 'em. It's not a retheme (retheming Betrayal would be a monumental challenge), and it would reuse a lot of the game publisher's original text.

I'm giving a good long look at a new take on Black Vienna - with agents named for their NATO Phonetic Alphabet equivalent:Agent AlphaAgent BravoAgent CharlieAgent DeltaAgent Echo

Just trying to figure out what to do for #27. My first choices would be Zero, One, or Niner, but their single-character representations would be to close to "O", "I", and "g". Maybe "Agent ?" ?

What would be typical image format (GIF, JPG, etc), resolution, and aspect ratio for card designers?

When I tack on other cards to the end of the deck, can I specify to print them with other backs?

edited to add: I'd even just like to have my cards come up with the correct backs. Let me explain:

In the Designer, I chose an image I wanted on the back of every card in the deck, and I dropped it into the "Back" slot. I then dropped all the card fronts into the correct slots. Then I saved the project, and clicked "Preview."

In the preview window, every single card I created had the same image showing on the back as I'd selected for the front. None of my card backs were showing up at all. When I clicked "Edit" to go back to the Designer, the card back designs I'd selected were in the right slot.

Hi TommyFirstly in regards to your question the answer is no, they will have the same back as the other cards. I put up with this with fillers, since the alternative seems wasteful. One clever trick I've seen people do is to leave a spot on the card back that can be filled in with a marker pen to indicate that the card belongs to a different deck. They do also have another product (not on special as far as I can tell) called learning cards where each card has a unique back and front that might be worth it for a complicated deck.

In regards to preview the universal consensus is that this is broken and you should ignore preview entirely, basically the designer is a what you see is what you get editor - preview is a buggy perverse mess which is more worrying than helpful.

I would do all the things I have ever dreamed of doing. I would love to become a professional whistler.I'm pretty amazing at it now, but I wanna get, like, even better. Make my living out of it.

Bffffttt, Pffffttt, Buuuuurtt........

kneumann wrote:

One more question. If I make a deck for a game with just text, is there a way to share the design with others? It is not a gallery so I was not sure if I can do this. Thanks

Ken, what you've described would be a deck design made in artscow's designer. There is not a way to share this. It was tried by many folks when people were first printing Free Trader, nothing seemed to work. It was even possible to see another's design, but to save it to your designs, or to purchase it wouldn't work.